Diablo III

By Yusuf M.
in Gamers' Hangout

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Grand Master

PGHammer

Posted
Posted

Well, finally got in, took ages to get in. but.. I am in!

Edit: Spoke too soon, can't make my "hero" keeps timing out.

Got in - hacking my way through the Old Cathedral. (That's right - this admitted Diablo n00b smoked through the first three quests without dying.)

However, the Fallen Star quest (set in the Old Cathedral) more than makes up for it in nasty (I've already died three times and nearly died one other). By default, you are soloing your way through the quests and playing on Normal difficulty (and be glad of it) - that way, you aren't too embarrassed to die. Fortunately, you don't get penalized for dying until you crack level 10. I'm playing as a wizard (not a barbarian or monk); however, unlike most RPGs, wizards can certainly wield swords (I currently do, in fact) - hence "hacking" can be taken literally. Watch out for Beasts (swollen corpses) - splitting them open (which you HAVE to do to make them dead again) releases poisonous snakes (anywhere from six to ten per Beast). So NOT fun (especially if you are also dealing with Risen and more Beasts or other awfuls).

Connectivity - they haven't got things balanced quite right yet - expect difficulty logging on (there's a note on this at the login screen).

Looting and scavenging - do NOT be afraid to loot the corpses; there well could be gold or other needfuls (like weapons and potions) - there's also a Scavenger achievement for this.

I left the settings at the defaults it picked up (1280x720 with HIGH (!) detail) and I don't exactly have the strongest of GPUs (AMD HD5450). That indicates that even laptops will have few issues with the game (like StarCraft II and unlike World of Warcraft pre-4.0), as long as they aren't ancient in terms of graphics hardware. My CPU is powerful enough (Intel Q6600), and even the system RAM (4 GB) is quite suitable.

Overall, I'm surprisingly impressed (and I didn't expect to be). I do believe I'm going to have to add time for D3 to my gameplay rotation.

Grand Master

firey

Posted
Posted

Got in - hacking my way through the Old Cathedral. (That's right - this admitted Diablo n00b smoked through the first three quests without dying.)

However, the Fallen Star quest (set in the Old Cathedral) more than makes up for it in nasty (I've already died three times and nearly died one other). By default, you are soloing your way through the quests and playing on Normal difficulty (and be glad of it) - that way, you aren't too embarrassed to die. Fortunately, you don't get penalized for dying until you crack level 10. I'm playing as a wizard (not a barbarian or monk); however, unlike most RPGs, wizards can certainly wield swords (I currently do, in fact) - hence "hacking" can be taken literally. Watch out for Beasts (swollen corpses) - splitting them open (which you HAVE to do to make them dead again) releases poisonous snakes (anywhere from six to ten per Beast). So NOT fun (especially if you are also dealing with Risen and more Beasts or other awfuls).

Connectivity - they haven't got things balanced quite right yet - expect difficulty logging on (there's a note on this at the login screen).

Looting and scavenging - do NOT be afraid to loot the corpses; there well could be gold or other needfuls (like weapons and potions) - there's also a Scavenger achievement for this.

I left the settings at the defaults it picked up (1280x720 with HIGH (!) detail) and I don't exactly have the strongest of GPUs (AMD HD5450). That indicates that even laptops will have few issues with the game (like StarCraft II and unlike World of Warcraft pre-4.0), as long as they aren't ancient in terms of graphics hardware. My CPU is powerful enough (Intel Q6600), and even the system RAM (4 GB) is quite suitable.

Overall, I'm surprisingly impressed (and I didn't expect to be). I do believe I'm going to have to add time for D3 to my gameplay rotation.

I actually got in just after I made the post. I'm currently doing the quest where I am going to put the crown on the guy. I too am a diablo noob. I rolled a monk and am yet to die. I am level 9, almost level 10 and am thoroughly enjoying myself. I've been playing solo though the templar guy you get is good for the social bit.

I am running at the default settings, except I am playing in windowed mode. I have an 8800GT Akimbo Super-clocked, 4gb ram, and a Core2 Quad Q6700, and I am having 0 visual issues.

luckily (or unluckily) I don't have a real social life.. so with D3 and GW2 I am set.

edit: 10 mins after I posted this.. I defeated the king and beat the beta!

Grand Master

firey

Posted
Posted

My friend and I finished the beta say around 2 hours.

Took me about 2 hours solo, and was about 40 minutes in a 3 person co-op.

I just love the "Congratulations, you have defeated the Diablo 3 beta!" thing. LOL awesome Blizzard.

Yea, that made me laugh, but at least I knew it was the end haha.

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted

Well with the open beta weekend my friend and I played through the beta (I've been in the closed beta but he wasn't), we have decided that Diablo 3 is just not fun. It feels really slow for the style of game it is in our opinions, to the point that we thought maybe it was just us getting bored of games in general, then remembered Path of Exile and how much fun it was. I think D3 just changed from D2 too much, they took everything that was fun about D2, modified it, and made it worse. About the only improvement we can find from D2, is the drops are assigned individually to each player so you don't have to try to click faster than the other players to get drops. Don't get me wrong, the game is polished (like any Blizzard game), but it's simply not as fun for me as D2 is even in todays computer age. In terms of fun factor, D3 is a major regression from D2, definitely won't be buying it unless they do something amazing after release.

Luckily for me, I got into the Path of Exile closed beta as well, so I'll be playing that instead, if only I could get a friend key....

Rising Star

spedanden

Posted
Posted

Well with the open beta weekend my friend and I played through the beta (I've been in the closed beta but he wasn't), we have decided that Diablo 3 is just not fun. It feels really slow for the style of game it is in our opinions, to the point that we thought maybe it was just us getting bored of games in general, then remembered Path of Exile and how much fun it was. I think D3 just changed from D2 too much, they took everything that was fun about D2, modified it, and made it worse. About the only improvement we can find from D2, is the drops are assigned individually to each player so you don't have to try to click faster than the other players to get drops. Don't get me wrong, the game is polished (like any Blizzard game), but it's simply not as fun for me as D2 is even in todays computer age. In terms of fun factor, D3 is a major regression from D2, definitely won't be buying it unless they do something amazing after release.

Luckily for me, I got into the Path of Exile closed beta as well, so I'll be playing that instead, if only I could get a friend key....

What's missing from Diablo 2 that was more fun or better? It feels just like Diablo 2 to me (pacing, gameplay). The things that are gone (im glad they are) are talent trees and spamming potions. Talent trees give the illusion of customization, yet everyone uses the same optimal build. And spamming potions is just... a joke.

Same mechanics; click-kill-random loot-repeat.

Great Diablo story and lore (from what we've seen).

Better graphics.

Better skill system; all viable yet they limit the number you can equip to cause tough choices.

I see only win. But different strokes man, do what makes yah happy.

Mentor

Roadrunna

Posted
Posted

Just tried to play but seems the server is having problems at the moment. And this is exactly why I won't be buying it - I hate wanting to play a game and being unable to play it simply because the server is down or my internet is down. At least with Steam there is an offline mode. Yes I could play something else but I'm not playing games all day, just a couple of hours or so in the evening.

I'm aware that this is a beta but with just 3 weeks or so until release I can see a lot of players bitching upon release day about not being able to play!

Mentor

Amarok

Posted
Posted

What's missing from Diablo 2 that was more fun or better? It feels just like Diablo 2 to me (pacing, gameplay). The things that are gone (im glad they are) are talent trees and spamming potions. Talent trees give the illusion of customization, yet everyone uses the same optimal build. And spamming potions is just... a joke.

Same mechanics; click-kill-random loot-repeat.

Great Diablo story and lore (from what we've seen).

Better graphics.

Better skill system; all viable yet they limit the number you can equip to cause tough choices.

I see only win. But different strokes man, do what makes yah happy.

This sums up my thoughts as well. I've played the beta for a couple months now. Running through it again with each patch, etc and I've played the Path of Exile beta as well. To be honest I'm still looking forward to D3 and not at all looking forward to Path of Exile. I thought it was fun but just okay. Different strokes!

Grand Master

firey

Posted
Posted

Just tried to play but seems the server is having problems at the moment. And this is exactly why I won't be buying it - I hate wanting to play a game and being unable to play it simply because the server is down or my internet is down. At least with Steam there is an offline mode. Yes I could play something else but I'm not playing games all day, just a couple of hours or so in the evening.

I'm aware that this is a beta but with just 3 weeks or so until release I can see a lot of players bitching upon release day about not being able to play!

Have you never played a blizz game before? I remember when WOTLK patches started coming out before release. WoW Was pretty much unplayable. Servers crashed left and right, the lag was crazy. Blizz ended up giving everyone 3 days free play because for about 3 days it was pointless to even play.

Also, with this beta test it lets Blizz see what kind of hype there is, so they know how to tackle the servers to ensure it's perfect for launch. I am sorry, but if you are basing buying a game on a free, public, beta and how the servers are.. that's just silly to me.

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted

Game is pretty good. I haven't got too far though. Mostly been messing with options for video. Is this game still being optimized?

I would hope so, never had any issues until my friend and I played, we both had intermittent FPS issues, he has a pretty new laptop (with a dedicated video card) and he put his settings on the lowest and still had the issues. And he's played CoD:MW3 and other much higher quality (graphically) games with no troubles on his laptop.

But I too had similar issues to him while we were playing together, never had any issues playing on my own before the stress test. (and they were choppy graphics, not anything network related)

Grand Master

shakey

Posted
Posted

I would hope so, never had any issues until my friend and I played, we both had intermittent FPS issues, he has a pretty new laptop (with a dedicated video card) and he put his settings on the lowest and still had the issues. And he's played CoD:MW3 and other much higher quality (graphically) games with no troubles on his laptop.

But I too had similar issues to him while we were playing together, never had any issues playing on my own before the stress test. (and they were choppy graphics, not anything network related)

Ok, phew. I had to set almost everything to low, and put shadows off. I would still get these odd jerks, though nothing realy seemed to be running slow. No change to the settings really solved the issue. I would imagine running TF2 with everything maxed would at least enable me to run this game at medium :p

Neowinian

Fredrik Wallentin

Posted
Posted

If I were to wrap up my feelings about the stress test beta, it would be best described by the words; "Unable to connect to the service".

Blizzard, 16 years of Battle.Net and you still fail.

Its a stress beta. do you not understand what that means ?

Blizzard wants the servers to go down more or less. They are getting information of this so they can optimize the servers.

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